


Chiaroscuro

by faceslikebirds (bluedreaming), fragment11 (bluedreaming), kaithartic (bluedreaming), tinybitsoflight (bluedreaming)



Category: EXO (Band), f(x)
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-30
Updated: 2014-07-30
Packaged: 2018-02-15 23:39:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2247675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluedreaming/pseuds/faceslikebirds, https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluedreaming/pseuds/fragment11, https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluedreaming/pseuds/kaithartic, https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluedreaming/pseuds/tinybitsoflight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jongin and Baekhyun meet on the subway/in dreams/on canvas.</p><p>Warning/s: presence of a minor, age-gap, history/mentions of abuse/sexual abuse, very disturbing imagery, unintentional self-harm, mental illness, eating disorder themes, non-explicit noncon, mention of medications, descriptions of violence, non-major character deaths, cannibalism themes</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chiaroscuro

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in Perfected Art, the [baekai exchange](http://perfectedart.livejournal.com/3667.html)
> 
> Thank you so much to Miwa and Fez and Tseyang who helped me get started and encouraged me along the way, for Jenna and Rina for being sweethearts, to Lucy for reading at at the 11th hour to help with ratings/warning and especially to Shanti without whom I couldn't have possibly finished.
> 
> To my dear recipient: I loved all your prompts and I hope that this story is okay (because you said you wanted dark). You are an awesome person!

**Next stop K—. Doors will open to your left.**

Jongin wakes with a jolt. _Not my stop._ He blinks bleary eyes and looks around the coldly-lit subway car, trying to orient himself, but the lights halo into a blurry mess. _What was that again?_ he reaches for the tattered edges of the dream but it's gone, fluttering shreds of white fabric disappearing into the shadows at the edges of his vision, fading into the night outside his window. _Overtime again. This internship is slowly killing me._.

The static of sleep is just beginning to numb his brain again when the train jerks to a halt, and he's thrown off balance, almost crushing a boy against the wall. Jongin's so disoriented he probably wouldn't have noticed except that the boy turns huge terrified eyes to him and shrinks into the curve of the wall.

"I'm sorry," he manages to mumble, straightening himself again, one wrist twisted up in the handgrip. He attempts a small smile but something must have gone wrong because the boy looks more frightened than ever. _I'm not going to eat you._

The doors open a loud swish as hot muggy air rushes in to displace the cool electric oxygen mix inside the car. The sound of rustling fabric and stumbling footfalls fills the air as tired commuters slowly make their way onto the platform. Jongin notes only one anomaly in the late-night routine: the skinny figure of the boy contorting through the zombie-like wave of passengers as he runs into the dark, white eyes glancing over his shoulder.

Jongin shakes his head, exhausted. _Only one more stop, then drag myself five minutes home to fall into bed._  
As the doors swish shut again, the low humming of the subway accelerating to a smooth roar, the image of the boy flickers across the inside of his eyelids.

_I'm sure I've seen those eyes before._

***

#### There are rows of heads attached to bodies lying on steel gurneys stretching out in long grey rows into the future, scalps peeled back and skulls bare and glistening in the stark fluorescent light. Jongin stands, scalpel in hand. He's supposed to locate the hippocampus, but there are no holes in the skulls. His lips shape the words "what am I supposed to do?" but with a sharp burst of fear he realizes that his tongue is missing -the man in the white coat took it out- he remembers and he sees the white fabric start to swish in the distance as he frantically tries to saw at the white bone in front of him but the steel blade shatters in his hand and he's left with only slivers of silver-coloured failure. This cloud has lost its silver lining. He moans but no one can hear and even if they could he wouldn't be understood anyway.

Jongin wakes up screaming wordlessly, cold sweat pooling in his collar bones and dotting his forehead. It takes hours for him to unwind his tightly-coiled up spine enough for him to lie back down again, and by then the darkly-festering sky is already bleeding out into pinks and reds.

***

Night had already fallen, darkness dusting the back garden with the soot of the day's disappointments as Baekhyun took the cover off of a fresh canvas. The white fabric shone starkly in the light of the lamp, almost obscene in its untouched purity. _I want to throw up._

Baekhyun stabbed his paintbrush into the vivid vermilion and gouged the whiteness with an angry gash, splitting the unbearable perfection into two broken halves. His nausea subsided gradually as the blankness was despoiled by reds and blues, gradually coalescing into the view of the inside of a subway car, harshly lit by blue light, the furiously bloody sunset outside the windows flashing past in flickers of claret and crimson. His paintbrush faltered as the form of a sleeping young man swam into focus. _Have I seen him before?_ But the wet paint was already moving of its own accord, his paintbrush pulled along to split the young man's skull apart, memories slipping out and falling onto the floor. _He seems to have too many things he wants to forget._ The memories dripped onto the floor of the subway car, gathering in the cracks and pooling in the dips between passengers' feet and suddenly there were too many faces, too many pairs of eyes staring back at him from beyond the canvas; a certain pair of eyes... _No no no nO NO!!!_ He quickly thrust his hands, paint brush and all, into the waiting can of black paint and smeared comforting darkness over the waiting nightmares. _You can't see me now._

When the subway car was submerged in a pool of inky blackness he picked up the wet and sticky canvas and dragged it over to the lion-clawed bathtub in the corner, filling it with lukewarm water to drown the thoughts that kept crawling out of the paint. Watching the canvas sink into the murky depths, he absentmindedly gnawed at the knuckles on his right hand, not noticing the sudden bright poppies staining his lips.

***

"I've been having those dreams again..."

Kyungsoo looks up from the stacks of paper on his desk to frown at Jongin over the neatly organized white mountains, crisp and lined up neatly according to height.

"I thought you had said you were over your night terrors." His expression is disapproving, and Jongin shrinks into his chair.

"Stop doing that." Kyungsoo sighs and uncrossed his legs, leaning over the desk to stare Jongin in the face. "We're friends; we grew up together." His face twists in annoyance.

"But you're a doctor..." Jongin explains weakly. _White fabric._

"So are you!" Kyungsoo states bluntly, crossing his arms. Seeing Jongin's mouth begin to move in rejection, he elaborates. "Fine, you're still an intern, but it's pretty much the same thing."

Jongin looks down at his hands. They're still clean, nails scrubbed, tiny white half-moons visible at his cuticles. _There's no sound of shattering glass, no smell of gasoline, nothing wet and sticky under my fingernails. Why can't I get over this?_

"You're the psychiatrist," he glares at his childhood friend. "You tell me."

"Fine." Kyungsoo leans back in his chair, the expensive leather whispering as it's brushed by the white fabric of his coat. "You're still suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder due to your parents' deaths in a car crash at which you were present and from which you sustained sufficient injury to be constrained to a hospital bed for an extended period of time, during which your head trauma caused you to relive the events of the accidents repeatedly while in an alternate state of consciousness."

Jongin snorts dismissively. "That's why I don't like doctors."

Kyungsoo only laughs, steeling his fingers pensively. "I could wax eloquent on the issue but you've heard it all before. Yes, you've had your problems, but you've gotten past them and grown because of it."

Jongin looks at him skeptically. "I don't call having a sudden panic attack in the E.R. 'getting past problems'."

Kyungsoo only glares, owlish eyes boring into Jongin's skull as though he's trying to locate the source of the problem in his brain and meticulously remove it.

"It's not your fault that a random patient somehow triggered deeply buried memories of the past and brought up some gunky bits from the murk that your mind couldn't cope with."

_I really don't like it when you talk about my mind like a lake or river. I'm sure yours is crystal clear but mine has opaque depths that even I can't identify and definitely don't want to._

"Of course, his words didn't help much either, screaming about his mother..." Kyungsoo looks thoughtful. "You never did tell me what he all said."

"That's because I don't remember," Jongin points out, ignoring Kyungsoo's doubtful expression. His friend is right. _I don't remember because I made myself forget._ Ever since the accident, he's been good at that. _"The human mind is surprisingly resilient." Yes, because we learn how to patch over all of our brokenness._

"Well anyway..." Kyungsoo looks at him pointedly. Jongin knows that his friend doesn't believe him, and he's right. _But I'm not going there._ "If this starts up again you're going to have to go back on Lorazepam."

"No!" Jongin is adamant. _I know it calms me but I only feel choked._

Kyungsoo only sighs. "You can't fall back into a rut, Jongin, and you know it."

Jongin goes quiet, thinking about things he'd rather not remember. _I have too many of those._

***

**Next stop K—. Doors will open to your left.**

It's been another one of those days at work. _At least I'm not in the E.R. anymore..._ But he still cringes every time the faint wailing of an ambulance siren breaks into his concentration. His supervisor notices the twitch in his hands and pulls him aside.

"I thought that you were stable, Kim." Jongin shrinks under the weight of the gaze directed at him. "Neurosurgery is not a joke. You need to get your personal baggage together or I'll have to suggest you be transferred somewhere less critical."

Jongin wants to scream but he only nods in silent recognition of the absolute power of the hierarchical system of the hospital, where interns are the lowest of the low.

The feeling of suffocation follows him into the subway and clings to his limbs as he sways in the car, tilting back and forth with the movement of the train. The lights of the city, so distant through darkness and plexiglass, twinkle through his drooping eyelids.

#### It's a green, cool forest, just before dawn. Or is it sunset? The first or last rays of sun are flickering through the silhouettes of the branches of trees, staining the sky with red and gold. Jongin tries to move his arms but they feel oddly long and...woody? He tries to bring them up to his face to see what's wrong but they don't seem to be able to move that way; al he can achieve is a slight trembling, and with a strange, sick feeling he realizes that he has no eyes. He tries to scream, to shape the blossoming horror in the pit of his belly into some semblance of expression, of order, but with a jolt of terror he realizes that he has no mouth either. In fact, he has no body at all.

#### Just then he hears, not through the ears he doesn't have but rather senses through his feet, whose toes seem to extend deep into the rich ground, an approach. Someone is coming, and he doesn't know how he knows, but he knows it's a very bad thing. His arms and fingers are trembling with fear, and his fingers have strange fingernails attached to them that flitter in the sudden chilling gust of wind.

#### The footsteps stop next to him, and he's braced himself out of instinct even before he feels the first bite of metal stabbing into his side. And even so, the pain is so much worse than anything he could possibly have imagined. He wants to scream so badly but he can't and his agony, so large that it's suffocating the air right out of him, can only creep out in a violent shaking that threatens to dislodge his....roots? Jongin realizes with a start that he's a tree, a tree in a forest, and he's being cut down. And there's absolutely nothing he can do about it, as the metal axe slices deeper into his wood, his flesh, and his bloody sap runs down to soak the forest floor with soundless pain.

Jongin wakes, mouth stretched wide in a silent scream and his eyes dart wildly around the stark white blankness of the subway car walls. His hands twitch and he's relieved to be able to curl and uncurl his fingers as he runs them over his arms and sides, _I'm still all here —_ the tightly-coiled springs in his back relaxing as he closes his jaw and rubs the sore muscles. Luckily it's the typical late night commuter crowd; everyone is too preoccupied with themselves to notice anyone else.

 _Wait..._ For a split-second his eyes meet a familiar pair staring back at him, before they flit away; wild things refusing to be caged as the train skids to a halt and the tired passengers rise up struggling from their seats, arming themselves with bags and boxes and half-closed eyelids. The boy darts out the doors as soon as they slowly slide open, groaning in protest to disgorge their unhappy contents, but his foot falls just a moment too late and he's pushed down into the mass of stumbling, rushing feet, notebooks falling and papers scattering everywhere. _Like my memories._ Jongin watches, still disoriented with sleep and phantom pain as the boy struggles to gather up his notebooks and rescue his scattered papers from the slow but inexorable stampede but it's loo late: the bell sounds, and it's only when the door is closing that Jongin stirs enough from his daze to realize that one notebook is left on the ground of the subway car. He darts forward to retrieve it, eyes locking on the other pair staring back at him and the notebook held in his grasp as the doors slide shut and the train begins to move down the rails.

Almost thrown off balance by the acceleration, Jongin frantically scrambles around for a handhold, shoving the notebook into his bag where it's promptly forgotten.

***

Baekhyun wasn't looking at the bank balance when he went to sign for his father's lawyer, but he saw it anyway. There were a couple zeroes more than last time, and it took everything in him to tear the pen across the paper in an angry scrawl and pass the flimsy thing back to the man smiling skull-like behind the desk instead of crunching it into a ball and crushing it into the thick velvet-pile carpet.

"Your father sincerely regrets the situation but due to work, he will once again be prolonging his stay in Europe for another year." 

The man looked anything but apologetic. His face was swollen with fat and there was a globule of spittle nestled grotesquely in the corner of his mouth. Baekhyun's hand twitched but he only nodded his head stiffly.

 _Just don't think that pushing more money at me changes anything._ The zeroes only added more emptiness and weren't capable of filling anything.

***

#### The leaves are rustling overhead and flickers of green from the forest canopy overhead pattern the pine-needled floor with interweaving lace, but the soft rustling only echoes hollowly in his head and the shadowy shapes tracing the ground seem to fence him in as his feet disturb the earth.

#### He's starving. He hasn't eaten for...how long? He doesn't know. And he can't find his mother.

####  _But my mother is dead..._ Jongin thinks, and even though this is a dream and things aren't necessarily the same, he knows, the emptiness in his belly a heavy certainty, that this fact is true.

#### He comes to this realization just as his oddly lumbering form breaks into a clearing, and stops, frozen in his tracks. Filling the clearing is the huge,noxious form of a female bear. His foot slips out of his control, stepping backwards involuntarily onto an errant stick, and the sudden sharp crack startles the cloud of flies which lift, swarming in heaving clouds to obstruct his vision.

#### Jongin lets out a sob, surprisingly rough over the shrill sound of millions of tiny wings rubbing against each other as they lift off, but he doesn't take the time to ponder that, waving his arms in front of his face frantically and losing what's left of his shredded composure when he sees the furry paws flying across his vision, sharp but ragged claws attached. _I'm a...bear?_

#### He staggers back, crashing through the underbrush but the forest has closed in behind his back and tiny twigs tear at his hide and entangle themselves in his matted fur. His ribs are visible as he gasps in fear, heaving against painfully stretched skin as the flies buzzing through the air choke him.

#### Entangled in grasping branches, trembling, Jongin feels his bear-self eye the redness of the tear in the side of his mother; the sweet smell of rotting flesh disregarded by his painfully cramping stomach. He is starving.

#### As his bear-self slowly makes his way forward through veils of flies, Jongin screams inside until his eyes bleed.

#### He's seen this ending before.

There's an ear-splitting sound echoing throughout the room — Jongin is terrified awake only to find that it's his mouth that is open and his voice that is hoarse; it's his flecks of cranberry dotting the white sheets as he tremblingly crawls out of bed and staggers over to the bathroom. Splashing water on his face, bloodshot eyes staring out from a sallow complexion are what meets him when he looks in he mirror.

_You know how this ends._

***

Baekhyun sat in front of the blank canvas, glaring as it stared back at him. The whites of its eyes were showing; soon it would roll over and reveal its pink fleshy underbody and he would attack with his paintbrush, stabbing the white skin repeatedly and setting the crimson free.

His mouth watered; he was hungry, hadn't eaten all day and he'd somehow lost his sketchbook on the train coming home from the mountain of lard in the stinking office in the rotten city. But food would have to wait. He could feel a lurking victory in his bones, taste the hunt on his tongue, bitter but sweet.

Sitting beside the easel on a forgotten side table, a small mountain of little white tablets continued to grow.

***

He's rummaging through his bag, _definitely not_ looking for the Lorazepam prescription he got from Kyungsoo and has meticulously avoided getting filled, when he finds the notebook.

_This isn't mine..._

It takes him a moment to remember the incident in the subway on the way home. _The dream, the waking, the white pages scattering like petals ripped from a flower —_ he shakes his head to clear his mind.

_I'm stronger than this._

The notebook is actually a sketchbook he discovers upon opening the black cover and flipping through the overflowing pages. The sketches are in pencil, sometimes so light it's difficult to make out the shapes lurking on the page, sometimes overwhelmingly dark, the angry pencil strokes viciously ripping the paper to shreds.

He's idly flipping through the images, looking for some identifying information, when a drawing catches his eye and freezes him stiff with shock.

 _Heads and scalpel and opening mouth to speak but bloody hole and no voice and —_ he slams the notebook shut, flinging it across the room as he cowers on the floor, shaking.

_What is going on?_

***

Armed with a cup of coffee, the minutes it took for the machine to run through the roasting and grinding processes spent sitting in the familiar and comforting darkness of the kitchen, Jongin approaches the sketchbook again with some trepidation. It's lying in a crumpled heap across from the bed, cover bent.

_It looks....sad and lonely._

He reaches out to gently lift the suddenly fragile-looking collection of papers and thoughts.

_And broken._

He curls up on the ground with the blanket from his bed, feet tucked under his legs, and opens the book to the terrifying page.

##### There is a boy, holding a scalpel limply in one hand, mouth open, the warm emptiness inside stained with red. Rows of bodies fade into the distance, their dark memories seeping out onto the floor.

For a moment his eyes play tricks and it seems like _the black liquid keeps dripping out slowly but steadily and the black tide keeps rising and his shoes are being soaked in the dark sticky stuff which cements his feet to the floor and he can't move and —_ Jongin slams the cover shut again.

_Breathe._

The sky gets just a little less dark outside the veiled windows. When he's ready, he opens the book again.

##### There's a tree...no, there's a boy...no, there's a tree that is a boy who is a tree, his arms branches and its roots his feet. He's a beautiful boy/it's a beautiful tree, enfolded in a wonderfully textured forest of birches and elms and pines, except for the fact that the boy's face is grimacing in pain because there's an axe wedged right into his side and you can see that he's trying to shrink away from the cruel metal, from the pain, from the thought of his life-blood dripping wet and dark onto the forest floor —

_— and the sound of footsteps coming closer and the hot, desperate smell of sap and fear and sweat and mixed into —_

Jongin takes a deep, rattling breath that's almost a sigh.

The sky is being streaked slowly with pink and red gashes drawn across the dark, the thin lines seeping slowly wider to envelop the deep expanses of night, when he opens the sketchbook again.

##### It's a bear. He's a bear.

 _It's a boy._ It's not his face but that doesn't matter. Bile rises in his throat.

##### The bear is starving. The bear is skeletal, peering out of a copse of trees, branches hiding its expression but the eyes are hungry holes sunken into brown matted fur. Hungry holes with their gaze trained on something in the clearing ahead. Something mouldering and fly-covered and —

_wet stinking mouthfuls of red no longer hot and steaming and fresh but cold and sour and reeking and —_

The sketchbook lies abandoned on the floor as Jongin's footsteps dash, the pitter-patter of a skipping heart, to the bathroom where the sounds of someone losing their last few meals can be heard.

***

Jongin's tired, afraid to go to sleep but _there's no way I'm going to let this affect me —_ he decides to take the notebook to Kyungsoo.

 _Maybe he can have a taste of my nightmares for once._ After all, isn't that what friends are for?

***

Kyungsoo flips the last page and closes the sketchbook. It sinks into the desk with the soft sigh of collapsing pages.

"Where did you get this again?" he asks a twitching Jongin, who has been alternating between sitting in the overly comfortable chair in Kyungsoo's office and jumping up to peer out the window at the view he's seen a thousand times already.

"On the subway," Jongin replies over one shoulder, toe tapping the ground as he watches a mother and child walk hand-in-hand into the neighbouring park. "When I was going home from work."

"And to whom does it belong?"

_Terrified eyes — "sorry" — eyes staring as the doors slide shut, eyes staring out of rough bark, out of matted brown fur, mouth empty, speechless, mouth full of red —_

Jongin winces, closing his eyes and giving his head a crooked shake which of course Kyungsoo notices, lips pursed. _At least he's not saying anything._

"A boy on the train," he blurts out, the words falling into the air like a secret confession. "He dropped it and the doors closed before..."

Kyungsoo merely looks at him, and Jongin realizes that his arm is stretching out towards the phantom door closing just beyond his reach. He quickly lowers his hand, but the tips of his fingers still tingle. His friend sighs and gets up from behind the desk.

"There's a name in the back of the sketchbook," Kyungsoo says slowly, looking at Jongin's hand. "You could try the high school on that subway line."

Jongin nods, relieved, and carefully takes the sketchbook back from Kyungsoo's outstretched grasp.

***

There was a faint buzzing coming from his bag. _Beep beep beep_ — sighing, he pulled out his phone. _Fifty missed calls._ He put it back into the close darkness without clearing the notifications.

It was always dark when he got out of studio class, the last brushstrokes always by fluorescent light, their flickering tubes nurturing the shadows that grew in the corners of the room.

He could have walked along the wall that edged the high school he used to go to, back when —

He always crossed at the set of traffic lights before so he could walk on the other side of the street.

He could still hear the whispers.

***

Jongin pulls out the sketchbook and looks once more at the name written inside the back cover.

_Byun Baekhyun_

He's sitting in the reception area of the office, trying not to notice the secretary staring at him. Her eyes are too large and it makes him nervous.

The vice principal emerges from the inner door, a concerned expression hovering behind a guarded smile.

"You were asking about Byun Baekhyun?" she asks, making no move to sit down. Jongin isn't sure whether to sit or stand. _Something is wrong._ He nods, holding out the sketchbook, but she makes no move to take it.

"I found his sketchbook on the train and would like to return it," he tries to explain, voice trailing off.

"How did you know to come here?" she asks.

"It's the only high school on that subway line?" he says, confused. _Why did I again?_ He's surprised when she looks relieved.

"Well I'm sorry to inform you that Mr. Byun doesn't attend here anymore," she states primly. Jongin's heart sinks. _How am I going to find him now?_

She turns to walk away but Jongin blurts out desperately, "Do you maybe know where I can find him?"

Her eyes dart to the side, glancing at the curious secretary before she shakes her head firmly.

"I'm sorry," she says, subject closed. She reaches her hand and Jongin shakes it, confused. A scrap of paper slips into his palm.

***

It's the name of a university. _University?_ The boy couldn't have been older than 16, 17 at the very most.

_But it's true that he wasn't wearing a uniform._

Jongin has to run because he's only going to just make it in time and he can't afford to make his supervisor even more annoyed.

He likes neurosurgery and medicine and putting people back together but sometimes it seems like things are falling apart right in his hands.

_I pressed my hands against the hole in Mommy's side but everything kept falling out anyway._

His mind strays to _ribs and brown fur and the pink flesh peering out of —_ he pushes the thought away.

_I can't let this drag me down._

But the dreams lurk behind his tired eyelids as he runs around the hospital getting shouted at.

***

Baekhyun usually avoided the back garden, especially by day when there weren't any shadows to hide the memories that lay thick and fast on every surface.

There were roses growing on trellises, white and pink and the red ones like blots of cranberry in the sun. His mother's roses. He missed her so much; if he could have enfolded himself in their green foliage and hidden away from the sun that cast too many shadows he would have done, but the thorns of memory were too sharp. He ran his hands over his arms in phantom pain. Baekhyun knew this from experience.

The rolling green of the lawns always recalled his father, afternoons _playing cricket or bocce and laughing while his mother looked on from the side before —_

Before.

Baekhyun didn't look at the center of the garden where it was getting ready to drop fruit; the tree that _she_ —

He went back inside to escape the bright sun and its harsher darkness.

***

**Next stop K—. Doors will open to your left.**

Jongin hasn't fallen asleep this time, though his eyelids keep drooping and he has to pinch himself awake between stops. But he doesn't see the boy anywhere. There are only walls of unfamiliar faces, blank flickering screens waiting to be switched off. He walks home alone in the dark.

***

He started out with light, fresh strokes, summer and foliage on the canvas. The colour of his mother's roses. They were sprouting out of the canvas, spilling onto the white in beautiful loops of vines and life and joy when a dark spot appeared in the centre of the happy tableau. He ignored it at first, only incorporating it into the vines and the stems and the shadows between petals but then it started to grow, twisting its way into the heart of the rose bush, stabbing it through the chest and tearing it into pieces.

It was a ginkgo tree.

***

The university is loud and bustling and so...free, compared to the tense atmosphere of the hospital and the worried faces of interns as they sprint from room to room, the eyes of the supervising doctors boring holes in the sweaty backs of their scrubs. After a brief conversation, Jongin is directed to the art faculty, a soaring building of glass and steel and dreams.

There's a dance session going on in a studio as he walks down a hallway. Pliés and arabesques and flexing calves and outstretched arms — _if not for the accident_ — but that's just the way things are.

The signs are a little confusing so he stops a student in the hallway.

"Excuse me," Jongin says politely. "I'm trying to find room L-063?"

The boy stares at him blankly for a moment. _Um..._

"You mean the basement studio?" Another boy has stopped in the hallway beside them. His black hair hangs sweaty in his eyes, his face looking like it's meant to be grinning but he's too serious for that at the moment.

The blank-faced boy's gaze sharpens.

"Why are you looking for the basement studio?" he asks, expression unexpectedly wary. Jongin is confused.

"I'm looking for the owner of a sketchbook I found on the subway," he explains. "Byun Baekhyun. I was told that he's a student here — do you know him?"

The students exchange glances.

"No one really knows him," the blank-faced boy says.

"He's kind of an anomaly," the black-haired boy adds.

"He's supposed to be some terrific prodigy though." The blank-faced boy loses some of his blankness as his mouth curves, almost in admiration.

"If he ever finishes anything..." The other boy shakes his head, black hair sticking to his forehead.

The dance session in the studio next to them ends just then, and lithe leotard-and-sweats-clad bodies tumble out the doors to engulf them in a cloud of energy.

"Zitao! Sehun!" A girl in a pink t-shirt and tights elbows her way through the bustle before noticing Jongin's presence. She looks him up and down in seeming appraisal before glancing at the blank-faced boy questioningly.

"Sehun?"

"He was asking after Baekhyun," he answers, shrugging. The girl, surprised, turns to Zitao.

"He found his sketchbook on the train?" Zitao looks at Jongin, who is watching the scene unfold in mild bemusement.

"Are you his friends or something?" he finally has to ask.

The girl laughs, not mocking, but almost...wistful?

"He doesn't have friends," she says, voice a little too bright.

"Not that he couldn't," Zitao adds, "if he wanted to."

Sehun only nods.

The crowd of students has mostly dispersed and Jongin can tell by the twitching in Zitao's shoulder and the carefully polite blankness of Sehun's face that they need to be somewhere.

"Could you maybe just give me directions?" he asks hesitantly. _Why does this all feel so much more complicated that just returning a sketchbook?_

The weight is heavy on his back, much more than simple paper and pencil markings.

 _...and why do I care so much?_ He pushes that thought away as the girl speaks.

"I could take you," she says, her smile friendly now.

Zitao looks relieved.

"Soojung will take good care of you," he says, waving as Sehun pulls him away, glaring at his watch. Soojung only laughs.

"Come on then," she says, turning to glance at a Jongin before proceeding down the hallway.

They take the elevator down to the main level — _I was going in the completely wrong direction_ Jongin groans — and then an almost hidden flight of stairs down to the lower levels.

It's not exactly dark here, but the fluorescent tubes don't do a good job of replacing sunlight and the occasional one even flickers. _Don't artists need good light?_ There aren't very many people either, the rare student wandering by spinning a paintbrush or eyes tracing invisible lines in the air.

Soojung stops at a plain steel door like the others lining the hallway. _L-063_

"We don't really have personal studios around here," she says, "but no one was really using it and Baekhyun is..." She shakes her head slightly and raps gently on the metal surface. There's no reply.

Cautiously, she pulls open the metal door and they peer around the frame. It's pitch black inside, and Jongin is even more puzzled. _Painting in the dark?_

"He must have gone home already," she explains, but he notices that she flicks on the light switch just to check.

They both stare in alarmed surprise at the tableau that meets their eyes.

***

He dropped the paintbrush, not even hearing it hit the ground as he grabbed the nearest paint spatula and began tearing long gashes into the canvas. The ginkgo kept growing and he kept tearing; strings of paint-stained canvas beginning to litter the floor like the aftermath of a macabre party.

When there was nothing left at all, nowhere for the gingko to take root or grow, he threw his palette of paints at it for good measure, not turning back as he gathered up his bag and left the room.

On his way out of school he kept his head down. He didn't want to see the curious expressions or shy waves.

***

Jongin can see tears beading in the corners of Soojung's eyes as the heavy door falls shut with a clang.

"I didn't know it was that bad," she says shakily.

Jongin wants to ask but the words sit heavy on his tongue. 

"You're going to a lot of a work to return a simple sketchbook you found on the train," Soojung begins, voice slightly shaky. "Do you know anything about Baekhyun?"

Jongin shrugs, feeling awkward.

"I've seen him a couple of times on the train when I'm going home from work," he explains, trying to keep his voice level. "I saw him drop the sketchbook but the doors closed and I didn't see him the next day so I thought..." His voice trails off.

He's surprised when, after an anxious silence, Soojung turns to him and grasps his arm, an almost...pleading?... expression on her face.

"I don't really know you," she begins hesitantly, "and I know this might be really weird, but I'm a good judge of people." She looks right into his eyes and Jongin couldn't look away if he tried.

"I can't really tell you about Baekhyun," she explains, "my sister works at the...and my family used to...well, anyway..." She stutters over the things she doesn't seem to be able to say.

Jongin nods, both confused and strangely electrified.

"Anyway," she gathers her composure, "Baekhyun really needs someone. Anyone. And he doesn't have anybody really."

There's a moment of expectant silence. Somewhere, fate is holding its breath.

"So I'm going to do something I don't have any business doing," she says, finally.

Jongin stands, watching as she withdraws her hand into a pocket and pulls out a phone.

"What's your number?" she asks matter-of-factly, glancing up from the screen.

Jongin silently hands her his own phone and she busies herself briefly with the two devices before looking up as she hands his back.

"I sent you directions to his house," she says in a hushed tone.

"But —," Jongin opens his mouth to protest the seeming intrusion of privacy.

"No," Soojung says firmly, and the set of her chin signals her determination, even if it does quaver slightly.

***

**Next stop K—. Doors will open to your left.**

Jongin is exhausted as usual. The hospital was overloaded today; there was an accident at a nearby factory and illegal child labour was discovered in the basement, small crushed bodies offloaded as the red screaming lights of ambulances streamed by the cold mouth of the E.R. that gorges upon their soft remains. Neurosurgery is as hard-hit as any other area and he was dead on his feet before his shift ended, dragging himself out of his scrubs and stumbling down the steps to the subway.

_Will he be there today?_

But he isn't, Jongin moving from car to car in a near-sleep daze as the hooded eyes of the dark windows stare into his soul.

***

#### He is a boy.

#### He is an ordinary boy, doing ordinary things, and it's nice, and it's a good dream.

#### Something buzzes by his ear.

#### He swats it away.

#### Something else buzzes by his ear.

#### He swats that away too.

#### Then suddenly he's inundated with small black things, mosquitoes, buzzing in his face, his eyes his nose his mouth his ears, landing on the surfaces of his skin and biting everything.

#### Choking him.

#### Draining him of all of his blood while tormenting him with the anti-coagulant being injected into everything at once, painful fire crawling underneath his skin as he bleeds, seeping into the air.

#### Screaming his secrets into the dark as the last pices of himself are drained away and he's left empty.

Jongin wakes, panic bubbling in his throat as he jumps into the bath and frantically scrubs off every phantom bug and bite he can still feel clinging to his skin.

He examines himself closely in the mirror afterwards, to shake the feeling of emptiness.

***

Baekhyun wanted to paint but after a couple of brush strokes he couldn't convince his trembling arms to cooperate, accidentally splashing the canvas a cranberry dark in his frustration. Since the painting was ruined anyway, he dabbled around with muddy shadows and flecks of white until the image started to resemble —

_a car crash with angrily twisted metal, red and nighttime and stars scattered across the pavement, broken glass filling the sky._

He felt warm but also cold. He wasn't hungry even though his stomach was empty.

***

_Today._

Jongin has made up his mind, and placing the sketchbook firmly in his backpack, he sets out.

The address on his phone is only one stop away from his; it's strange to be going so close and yet worlds away. The houses look the same, trees and flowers and walled gardens lining the road, the same wind ruffling his hair.

The house looks like a nice house, ivy winding around the gate and a bell that tinkles merrily when it's rung, but Jongin doesn't like it. The bell sounds hollow the longer it rings, and the vines growing around the windows are disconcertingly cage-like.

_This looks like it used to be a nice place._

There's no answer. He tries to peer in the windows, but thick blinds obscure the view, the shadows pooling heavily at their feet.

Looking to the side, he sees a small gate in the wall bordering the property, the bars rusty but still solid. He tries the latch experimentally and is surprised when it swings open.

A tree stands in the centre of the back garden. He catches a glimpse of leaves swaying in the wind — _is that a ginkgo?_ — when his conscience catches up with him, halfway into the yard, and he stops.

 _I can't do this._ The metal door screams in weak protest as he lets it fall back into place behind him.

A current of rot and vomit hangs heavy in the air under the bright notes of floral and summer as he turns his back.

***

It was the kind of day where he could feel the eyes drilling holes into the flesh of his back no matter where he went, their gazes heavy on his shoulders. He walked down the hallway, hood up and sunglasses covering his eyes, but there was still someone who waved at him; smiling — _teeth like bared grins_ — he shuddered and walked faster.

His empty stomach growled but his pockets were empty and there were too many people sitting at tables, swarming around counters, buzzing at windows. He descended instead.

The familiar darkness and flickering fluorescent tubes, usually so comforting in their squalid simplicity — _the only zeroes here are the real kind, with holes you can see through_ — seemed to be closing in, like the walls of his cramping stomach.

_Did I eat anything today?_

He twitched forward, picking up and then dropping paintbrushes.

_Do I even care?_

The brushstrokes on canvas, his own personal signature in oil and pigment, began fleshing out a shape that decided to look like a face.

His face.

He stopped and looked at it for a moment. The paintbrush took on a life of its own and darted down to the black, dipping in and flicking tiny drops at the portrait. Tiny mosquitoes, buzzing and whirling and twirling and the brush flicked faster and mixed with red and the past he, the canvas he was enfolded in a swarm of insects hungry for his blood but the painted arms hung heavy with oil and pigment and stuck to the canvas and he couldn't defend himself. Was engulfed in stinging darkness.

The paintbrush fell on the floor.

He walked home in the dark, the phantom swarm still hanging in his peripheral consciousness, drifting and circling at the edges of his vision. The stark lights of the subway couldn't pierce the slowly lowering veil over his vision, and as his eyes closed he saw a familiar face.

_I know you._

The lights went out.

***

**Next stop K—. Doors will open to your left.**

He's still carrying the sketchbook around in his backpack, the weight a strange anchor through his day, a comforting yet disturbing presence that lurked in the corner of his thoughts as he was running up and down corridors at the hospital, faces blurring past like tombstones.

_Should I try his house again tomorrow?_

The house.

_It makes me feel...wrong._

But Jongin wants to return the sketchbook, wants to figure out what is going on with his head and the boy on the train with the eyes —

The big beautiful wide frightened eyes. The eyes that are staring at him from a face that's too white, like freshly-primed canvas. A face that's moving as the slim figure sways, strangely tree-like, suspended for a heart-stopping moment before the limbs collapse with a sudden gust of wind as air rushes in to take his place.

Jongin braces himself for the sound of impact but there's only a soft thump as Baekhyun's small form is suddenly, magically cradled in his arms; his body moving reflexively while his mind is still screaming, half a subway car behind.

The train slows as they near the stop — _Baekyun's stop_ — and Baekhyun is limp and crumpled in his arms and he doesn't know what to do.

There are people looking at him from out of their late-night overtime-induced daze; he just smiles awkwardly and finds himself carrying Baekhyun's _far too light_ form off of the train.

***

Jongin ends up at Baekhyun's house, his feet absentmindedly making their own way along the dark street ghosted by the occasional streetlight halo that makes a corona of the boy's sleeping face.

He doesn't even try the front door but makes his way directly to the side gate, managing not to trip over the threshold as he bangs his elbow against the frame — _ouch!_ — he looks down at the silent form in his arms, but Baekhyun doesn't open his eyes.

He would be panicking but he's still breathing.

_Pull youself together Jongin, you're practically a doctor._

But something about the image of Baekhyun's pale face in the white moonlight gives him a sick, terrified feeling in his stomach.

He hardly notices the terrible smell in the back garden as he rounds the wall and searches for an entrance — there's a glass-walled greenhouse built onto the back of the house and thankfully the door is unlocked. Through the winding maze of miniature palms and hanging vines choking up the dim place, he manages to find an entrance to the rest of the house.

The stillness is deafening and dust lies thickly on the heavy furniture — Jongin doesn't like the look of the place or the ghostly silence but there's nothing for it. He lays Baekhyun down on a sofa and looks around for a blanket, shaking it out thoroughly before tucking it around the sleeping boy.

The kitchen, once he finds it in the maze of dimly lit rooms, appears to be just as little-used as the rest of the house. There is only one water glass drying on the counter, and the cupboards are bare.

_I'm beginning to understand why you collapsed._

The sick feeling in his stomach intensifies. He returns to Baekhyun with a bowl of water and a cloth which he smooths over his forehead.

"You need to take better care of yourself."

Baekhyun doesn't reply.

He's picking Baekhyun's bag up off the floor to set on a nearby ottoman when a bottle spills out, rolling onto the wood to land against the clawed foot of the coffee table.

It's a prescription bottle.

Jongin bends down to pick it up.

_Gabapentin._

_Brakes and glass and white walls and dirt falling on polished wood and —_

He looks over at the sleeping boy's face. He's breathing peacefully now, only a slight rattle in his chest, but Jongin remembers his expression before he hit the ground.

He reaches into the bag and finds another bottle, pulling it out with slightly trembling hands so that he can hear the tablets inside rattle.

_Lorazepam._

***

"Good morning."

There was a young man sitting beside Baekhyun, chair pulled up to the sofa, when the boy woke.

At first he was disoriented, eyelids fluttering as his mind worked to trace back the night's history and found nothing. _Bright lights — the sound of wheels scraping metal — silence._ Then he was panicked, long fingers twisting the blanket and eyes darting around wildly. His eyes fixed upon the young man sitting next to him, and he stopped breathing for a terrifying moment.

The man smiled.

His heart started beating again.

"I'm Jongin." 

The man's voice was kind, and for some inexplicable reason he felt safe.

He watched in a mild daze as Jongin gave him water to drink and a bowl of porridge to eat.

"I added my contact information to your phone," Jongin said softy. He sounded...shy.

Baekhyun nodded. He watched Jongin busy himself with folding the blanket and tidying the breakfast before leaving with a smile, securing a promise from Baekhyun to call him any time.

The door was swinging shut behind him when Baekhyun remembered.

_The face from the subway. The familiar face._

***

"So you took him home, stayed overnight, made him breakfast and gave him your phone number?" Kyungsoo sounds...concerned. Jongin is puzzled.

"Well you told me to go see him and return the sketchbook," he says hesitantly. Kyungsoo on a rampage is never a good thing.

"And did you return the sketchbook?" Kyungsoo is looking at him pointedly and Jongin wants to shrink into the long blinds that line the windows of his office but he only straightens his shoulders.

"It didn't seem like the right time..."

He thinks about Baekhyun, so limp in his arms, and there's that sick feeling in his stomach, along with...something else.

_Baekhyun, smiling bemusedly, eating porridge from a spoon. Baekhyun, eyes wide but not with fear, sipping water from a glass, Baekhyun, smiling._

"You're smiling." Kyungsoo's unexpectedly soft voice interrupts his thoughts. 

"Is that a problem?" Jongin is prepared to defend himself but Kyungsoo only sighs and, walking around his desk, sinks into his chair.

"You don't know everything about Baekhyun," he says. "I'm worried about you."

"Don't be." Jongin is adamant.

He's definitely not thinking about _Gabapentin. And Lorazepam._

***

**Next stop K—. Doors will open to your left.**

It's been another terrible day at the hospital, a baby rushed in straight from the E.R. with a partially crushed skull, screaming parents, red everywhere.

_Red everywhere._

So the corners of Jongin's mouth lift when he sees a small familiar figure on the subway. He's opening his mouth to call out a greeting when he sees how tired, how gaunt Baekhyun looks. _The sharp angles of his lopsided collar bones._

It's with a softer tone that he calls out.

"Do you want to have supper with me?"

He regrets his uncharacteristic forwardness a moment later — _I hope he didn't hear that!_ — but when Baekhyun looks up at him, the sadness on his face transforming before his eyes into bewildered hope, the something else in his chest is definitely a warm glow.

***

Baekhyun looked around the house. It was big, like his, and there was even a greenhouse, like his too — but everything was different.

He could hear the sizzling of sautéing vegetables coming from the kitchen as he wandered the parlour, examining portraits and picking up knickknacks.

"Make yourself at home," Jongin had said, and at first Baekhyun hadn't believed him, tentatively reaching out a hand to touch a miniature ivory elephant and expecting to be rebuked any minute. But Jongin had only smiled, going into the kitchen, and so Baekhyun had gathered up his courage, beginning to explore.

He was reaching out to pick up a delicately carved sandalwood box when he heard footsteps behind him and jumped, snatching back his hand as old scars throbbed. He watched in horror as his fingers, in grazing the sweet-smelling wood, sent it crashing to the floor.

_Thud._

The box landed on the parquet, opening, and tiny white things spilled out.

Baekhyun stood, frozen with terror. _Did I break it? Did I break it? What am I supposed to do?_ His heart beat out a staccato sadness. _I always ruin everything._

But Jongin only smiled as he crouched to pick up the box, gathering the tiny white objects into the palm of one hand.

Baekhyun slowed his racing heart. Curious, now that his remembered terror had dissipated, he moved closer to peer.

"What are those?"

"These?" Jongin laughed. "They're my baby teeth." Seeing Baekhyun's confused expression, he elaborated. "My grandmother saved them for me. She used to tell me that all my extra strength was stored in them, and that I must keep them safe forever."

It wasn't until they were eating, Jongin happily munching on mouthfuls of salad and garden-fresh tomato sauce, Baekhyun wanting to eat but not being able to get the food past his mouth, instead hiding bitefulls in his napkin, that he worked up the courage to ask.

"Where is your family now?"

A silence fell over the dining room, the sound of Jongin setting down his fork on the plate loud in the sudden emptiness. Baekhyun tensed. But Jongin only let out a soft sigh and reached for his water glass.

"My parents died in a car accident when I was young," he explained briefly after taking a sip of water. His eyes were sad. "I lived with my grandparents here, afterwards, until they passed away." He picked up his fork again, and speared a leaf of lettuce. "I love this house, and my grandfather's garden."

Baekhyun wondered why it felt like he had left something out of the explanation.

***

After supper Jongin follows Baekhyun as he explores the greenhouse. It's too dark for the garden, but that doesn't matter. Baekhyun wanders through the green foliage, dark head bobbing up behind the green as he bends to examine a bed of dahlias and then raises himself on tiptoe to gaze in awe at a row of orchids, fragrant with the scent of vanilla. He coos in delight at the canaries flying about their golden cage, the sweet honey song drifting up to brush the domed glass ceiling.

But it's the image of Baekhyun, smiling, framed by an arch of tiny pink roses, that Jongin remembers.

***

Baekhyun took the feeling of the greenhouse home with him. The domed ceiling, stars peeking through the glass, the bright airiness lit by delicate strings of fairy lights. Birdsong instead of choking silence.

_A grandmother, like a second mother, who keeps the baby teeth of her beloved grandson safe in a box._

He set up a canvas, fresh and blank and happy, and brushed on light strokes of green. Green vines, layered like lace, to brush his cheeks as he leaned around them to delicately smell the pink blossoms.

But mid-stroke, he froze, a sour smell drifting into his painting revery.

The sickening smell of rot.

_Is that? It can't be —_

He dropped the brush, pink and red streaking the floor, smearing down the hallway under the tread of his bare feet on the wood.

It was hot outside, hot and dry without a whisper of fresh air and his breath caught in his throat and crawled back down to his lungs.

The tree was dropping fruit. Limbs hung heavy with the noxious yellow orbs, the ground covered in a stinking mess. 

_Hair and blood and screaming and pain and the sick coming out his stomach and pouring our his mouth but the pain didn't stop and hands grabbing and pushing and pain and black and silence._

He didn't know how the pruning saw had managed to jump into his hands but he was all of a sudden hacking away at the trunk, hands red and wet covering his face and he screamed but only maggots came out.

***

#### He's not a tree. He's not a bear. He's a boy.

#### He's a boy and he's afraid — no he's terrified — his heartbeats are crushing his chest from the inside and he wants to scream but her hands are around his neck and her eyes can't see him.

#### He's begging with his eyes that are staring right into hers but she doesn't see him.

#### He's crushed under her heavy body and her hand on his skin — it's not striking him this time, it's not cutting him or scratching him or beating him into submission — but the pain is ten thousand, a million times worse and his body is writhing and the pain isn't in his skin but his chest and his head and his heart and he tears open his wet eyes to look up but she can't see him.

#### He wants to scream out the badness — the terrible horrible disgusting wrongness but her hair is falling in his mouth and covering his eyes and he can't see anything. And she doesn't see him.

#### And suddenly his arm comes loose and he's flailing and there's red and there's a crack and he gasps, open mouth, breath into his chest but the smell is of sick and dark and her body on him is limp and there's red and he's mouthing out help but there's no sound except for rotting fruit squelching underneath and he turns over onto shaking arms and empties the sick onto the ground. But the sick is still in his stomach, in his skin, in his nostrils, under his eyelids and he looks at her wide empty staring eyes and she can't see him.

#### He struggles to pull himself forward to grab at her flopping limbs like dead fish and he shakes but her head only falls back and forth and he screams and the sound coming out of his mouth is the broken glass that fell when his mother died and he's more broken than towers of glass shattering in the night. And she can't see him.

#### And the empty is rushing up to swallow his chest, his heart, his limbs, his head and he thinks about the stories his father used to tell him about strange tribes and strange customs like nightmares and the people who would eat the bodies of the dead so that their strength wouldn't leave with them and he sees the empty that has almost engulfed him whole and he opens his mouth — and that's when there are fingers and hands and voices and they're taking him away but he reaches back because he needs —

Jongin wakes up crying so hard that he's screaming sobs, turning over onto his side to vomit out the contents of his stomach onto to the carpet. It's when he's done, limp and weak and wiping his mouth shakily with the back of one trembling hand that he sees the red on his fingers. The red on his shirt. The scratches on his body.

He tries to phone Baekhyun but there's no answer, so he phones Kyungsoo instead.

He's not sure if his heart is still beating.

***

Kyungsoo looks at him from across the room.

Jongin is shaking on the sofa and there's a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His phone is on the table with a text from Soojung.

**there's an ambulance at Baekhyun's house**

"I need to tell you something." Kyungsoo looks worried but Jongin is impatient, tapping fingers against his knees in a frantic percussion.

_I need to see him._

He's terrified but he's still impatient.

"You remember the episode in the E.R.?"

Jongin snaps his head around to fix his attention on his friend.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Annoyance is colouring his tone but he doesn't care. The sick feeling in his stomach is churning his insides together and he thinks it will go away if he can only see Baekhyun.

"The patient that triggered your breakdown was a boy."

Jongin freezes, fingers mid-tap.

"A boy who had just been brought in, covered in blood and rotten fruit and screaming incoherently about being allowed to eat something."

Kyungsoo clears his throat.

"And his step-mother was also brought in at the same time but was pronounced dead upon arrival."

Jongin wants to cover his ears with his hands because the buzzing in them is getting too loud to hear. But Kyungsoo keeps talking.

"That boy was Baekhyun."

There's a thundering silence and Jongin breathes in a rasping sob as his brain tries to bury everything in the deep dark depths of his lost memories.

_Red dark black glass screaming a boy screaming the world screaming —_

But then he thinks about Baekhyun, framed by roses, the tiny fairy lights illuminating his glowing face.

He smiles.

He looks at Kyungsoo's concern and looks at his hands and looks back at Kyungsoo, getting to his feet to look at his friend face to face.

"It's okay," he says quietly.

Kyungsoo is about to protest, his mouth opening and his brow furrowed, but Jongin stops him with an outstretched hand.

_Baekhyun, framed by roses, smiling._

"I love him."

The something else, the warm glow, the mysterious feeling in his chest blossoms into gold and petals and the summer sun on his face, pushing the remnants of the sick badness out of his stomach.

***

He woke up, surrounded by flashing lights and beeping and tubes attached to him everywhere.

_Help._

A lady in a white lab coat came by — a doctor — his doctor — _NO!_

His hands flapped weakly, open and shut.

"You're severely malnourished, Baekhyun," Dr. Jung said, her voice kind, but — _hair and red and sick and pain and screaming_ — he tried to tell her but his eyes only filled with tears and frustration.

"You also haven't taken your medication for quite some time." She looked at him and sighed. "Why did you stop?"

_Because the dark was crawling in anyway._

A tear slipped out of one eye and fell down his cheek.

***

Jongin visits Baekhyun in the hospital. He sits beside the bed and holds his hand while he sleeps, fitful periods that must be wracked with dreams.

"No! Please!"

When Baekhyun is flailing in his sleep, the only thing that seems to help is Jongin's presence.

"No, don't take her away I need her!"

Baekhyun sleeps almost all the time now and he's only ever dreaming.

Jongin hasn't dreamed since.

***

After some deliberation, he shows the doctor the sketchbook that he never did end up returning to Baekhyun. She flips through it briefly before sighing and making to pass it back, but Jongin shakes his head.

_I don't think it's a good thing._

She puts it with his files instead.

"He was diagnosed with PTSD as a result of the incident with his stepmother, for which no charges were ever laid." Dr. Jung is nice and kind but Jongin isn't sure that anything she's doing is helping Baekhyun.

He nods anyway.

They're walking along the hallway, white curtains fluttering at each end. It feels like they could keep walking forever, and still not get to the bottom of the problem.

"He also has a lot of emotional damage from a long period of abuse by his stepmother while his father was perpetually out of the country. When he was brought in, he was babbling something about eating his stepmother." She shrugs.

Jongin would be glad that he doesn't have to meet this terrible women, but either way it doesn't make any difference to Baekhyun.

He keeps walking.

***

Baekhyun is released from the hospital and Jongin takes him home with him, against Kyungsoo's protests.

"Jongin, you need to take better care of yourself! This could end up spiralling out of control!"

Jongin just shrugs, ignoring his friend for once.

Baekhyun's father is in Europe and his lawyer is only an executor and, more importantly of all, Baekhyun wanted to go with him.

That's the only important thing anyway.

***

Baekhyun wasn't screaming or crying anymore; he was just flat. Empty. Everything was gone; the pictures were gone, the shadows were gone. She was gone.

She was gone and had taken everything with her.

He sat in the sun and watched the canaries sing.

***

Jongin is worried because Baekhyun still isn't eating.

He isn't eating, and his dreams are punctuated by screaming and crying and pleas for his stepmother.

"She took it from me and I want it back."

If Baekhyun doesn't start eating soon he'll have to have a feeding tube put in. Jongin doesn't want to see that happen.

***

Baekhyun was sitting in the green house, fragile wrists and delicate fingers drifting through the sound of the canaries singing.

The music flowed through him because he was empty.

There were footsteps coming but he didn't turn to look. They paused at his chair, the smell of porridge drifting to tickle his nose. He wasn't hungry.

"Give me your hand."

Baekhyun looked up. Jongin was standing there, a worried smile on his face.

Jongin.

If he hadn't been so empty he would have smiled.

Jongin took his hand and made a bowl out of his fingers before handing him the small sandalwood box that always held his baby teeth. His precious baby teeth, saved by his grandmother, the ones that held all of his strength.

The teeth were gone. He looked up at Jongin in confusion.

"I'm giving all of my strength to you."

Jongin smiled, putting the tray on his lap. The bowl of porridge was steaming and fragrant with honey. 

Baekhyun took a big bite and smiled.

_Milk, oats, honey and the dusty aftertaste of bone._

He felt stronger already.

***

Epilogue

~two years later~

"Hi!" Baekhyun waves to Jongin who is just walking up the tree-lined street. Jongin waves back, a little tired around the corners but looking happy.

He's been a full-fledged doctor, a neurosurgeon to be exact, for a while now and Baekhyun is proud of him.

"Did you wait a long time?" Jongin looks apologetic which makes Baekhyun smile. "Kyungsoo was chatty today for some reason."

_You're cute._

"No, I just finished getting what I wanted." He's holding a small box in his hands: a photo of his mother and a small pot that holds a cutting of her roses.

Jongin sees the little he has in his arms and lifts one eyebrow in a silent question, to which Baekhyun replies with a smile and brief shake of the head.

"Well I need to go meet Sehun and Zitao for lunch before I get started on that new exhibition painting," Baekhyun says, swinging his head towards the station from where Jongin has just come. "Do you want to walk together?"

Jongin sighs good-naturedly.

"You go on ahead," he says, grinning. "It's your eighteenth birthday anyway. You need to celebrate graduating and having a second successful exhibition."

Baekhyun sets his small box on the step and wraps his arms around Jongin's waist.

"I'd rather celebrate with you." He leans his head against Jongin's shoulder and sighs happily. Jongin rests his hand on the back of his neck for one comfortable moment before stepping back with a happy sigh and giving Baekhyun a gentle shove on the shoulder.

"Go on then!" he laughs. "You don't want to be late or Zitao will pout at you for the entire lunch."

Baekhyun laughs because it's true.

"Fine then," he pouts, standing on his toes to give Jongin a quick peck on the cheek. "I'll see you at home later."

Jongin smiles, handing him his small box and laughing as Baekhyun skips up the street, under the green of spring.

***

Jongin will go to the gate, opening the latch and slipping into the garden. The ginkgo tree will be in bloom; there won't be any sign of the noxious fruit that will later plague the landscaped lawn.

He'll go to the small gardening shed and clatter about for a bit until he'll find a small spade, returning to the trunk of the gingko tree. He'll methodically begin to dig a small hole at the base, stopping when it's two hand's-breadths deep.

Slipping a hand into his pocket, he'll pull out a small leather bag, tipping the contents into one hand to look at them before scattering them into the hole. He'll then carefully cover up the hole with the excavated soil and return the spade to the shed.

Just as he's on his way out the gate, he'll stop in front of the tree.

"I don't like you at all," he'll say, and he won't be talking to the branches. "But I'm so happy that I got to meet him, and I guess you get some of the credit for that, no matter how terrible."

Then he'll slip quietly out of the gate, which will clang closed behind him. On his way to the station, his hand will slip into his pocket and absentmindedly finger the small leather bag that used to hold tiny white baby teeth.

**Author's Note:**

> the mention of tribespeople eating deceased community members for strength purposes is NOT based upon a specific real life cultural custom, but rather a blend of things


End file.
